Chapter 19: 19

"Close your eyes, take three deep breaths, and ground yourself to the land beneath your feet as you feel its magical pull to your body."

The whistle of the wind harmonized on a flurried breeze as it swept through the trees and bounced and danced along the walls of the mountain faces carved into homes and other buildings.

"Are you concentrating, Princess?"

I ignored Soraya's commands and attempted to relax into my spot on the ground, legs crossed at the ankle while my hands reached into the verdant grass before me, fingers curling and squeezing fresh soil while the 'power' from the land was supposed to travel up and through me like a conduit.

Much like how the Sirens had given me their own source of energy when my powers had sought out the missing girl, the land was supposedly tied to the mysticism of Hefeta, and therefore a possible source for me to draw upon in order to exert my force without being in immediate danger so that I could practice and hone my 'skill'.

When I mentioned to Soraya and Olesia that killing wasn't necessarily a skill more than it was a curse, they just scowled in the way that only a Siren could, and then that was that.

"I don't think you're concentrating hard enough.  Imagine you're in battle and your voice fails you.  What then?"

"Then I suppose I'll use what little military training my brother-in-law gave to me before Oren took me, and pray to the Gods that it would be enough."

A sharp sting ricocheted off of my arm, and I recoiled with a hiss, opening my golden washed eyes to find that Olesia and the others had left, possibly long ago, and found only Soraya standing in the midst of a pigmented sunset bathed in red dipped oranges, pastel pinks and lilacs.

"How did you even know that was my arm and not my face?"

"I didn't.  Now focus, we only have seven days until the Summoning, and I will not have us being found unworthy by the God we intend to raise up because you were unprepared."

Soraya's unseeing eyes did, in fact, see everything  she needed in order to be an excellent teacher, but I was still wishing that Olesia had chosen Inala, Erinna, Sabira, or even Oren to watch over me as I attempted something I hadn't thought possible.

They wanted me to extend the smoke from me without my ever having to sing, which was the one place that it had only ever come from in the first place.

I wasn't sure if I would be able to pull it off, however, but that didn't stop Soraya from trying with all her might to exert her force over me to keep me still and quiet and 'concentrating', however the Everworld I was supposed to be doing that.

I felt no connection to the ground below me, no spiritual energy oozing from the land which my fingertips were squishing in and out of my palms.

There was no current, no zing of power that traveled its way up my arms until it spread out with a warmth of which there was no equal just as the Siren's power had done for me.

There was no telltale sign that my 'focus' was anything more than a daydream about all that had happened since I had come to Hefeta.

If I could forget the fact that Soraya was standing before me with a scowl on her permanently beautiful face, then I could also forget the fact that I was in imminent danger, what with the King of Valencia on the edges of Hefeta ready to snatch and kidnap any Siren he could get his hands on.

Why he hadn't placed more of a focus on trying to take down the community of Hefeta instead of ferreting out Sirens one at a time as they left the safety of their home, I wasn't sure, but it made sense to linger on the edges while collecting magical folk in order to help him take down the Sirens once and for all.

Hefeta was on Valencia soil, after all.

They were practically rubbing his nose in the fact that they could do what they wanted, and the only way he had a say in it was when one of the Sirens left their homeland.

I found myself wondering about summoning the god Nicos.

My mind reeled with all the possibilities that this ceremony would bring.

Would I stay to help them perform it, or would I wait until just one day remained and take my leave of Hefeta, having been glad to know that out there were people like me...people who could understand my plight, my bloodstained soul and the blackened heart inside of me.

Or would I miss the people I had met?  Would Inala attempt to come with me, being sworn in her blood to me?

Could I allow her to do that for me?

Or would I stay, and summon the strength of a god before my eyes, feel the rush of pure adrenaline and raw power that came with the fact of knowing that we had the might of an ancient deity on our side?

The thing about power was that once it seeped into your veins, there was no stopping the addictive rush you so suddenly craved.

I'd been given a power at birth, a terrible, cursed power that I despised with every shimmering, golden drop of blood inside of me.

No one questioned the terrifying moonlit mist that crawled from the depths of my throat as if the poison soaked soul inside of me had willed itself into a visible form, no longer content to reside inside someone with a conscience and held a loathing for the kill.

Unless said kill was well deserved, that is.  Like those men who'd attempted to attack and kidnap a little Siren, her head barely coming up to a grown adult's waist.

And maybe it was because she seemed so frail and small, so young and so much like me when I'd been taken to the brothels or the stockades or home after home after home until finally I'd learned to fight back with what I'd given, no matter how much I hated it, but I felt a kinship with her, just as I did the rest of the Sirens.

But was that enough to stay and play my part in their story?  To summon a god from the ancient pantheon?

The friendships from Inala, Sabira, and Erinna might've been enough, but there was still the matter of my sister Marlisa out there somewhere.

I could find her and bring her back here to live amongst her people, along with her husband and child.

If he baby turned out to be a boy, they could all live together on the men's side of the community and be safe, protected, home.

But if the baby was born a girl and manifested the Siren powers, what then?  Would her and Drevan be split from them just as my parents had once been split from us, because my father could not withstand our Siren's call, and thus put him in unimaginable danger?

Was it a life she would wish for herself, keeping her only child away from their father?

But surely, if the baby were born a girl and manifested powers out there in the world where I could not reach her and protect Drevan, then he was guaranteed a trip to the Everworld with the first squall of her cries.

But would I be able to make it to her in time to save them both?  Would they even want my help?

A sick feeling in the pit of my stomach tried to tell me that she didn't deserve my help, not after the way she'd treated me, judged me so harshly for protecting us, but that wretched part of me was unable to erase the love I had for my sister and her unborn child, for her husband that took us in when we had nothing and were nothing as well, who had taught me to fight and to protect myself at all costs.

It was no easy feat, being married to a woman with a Siren as a sister.

Especially having been in the military and knowing that his wife's own sister had slaughtered innocent men.

It didn't matter if it was an accident.

Dead is dead is dead.

It didn't matter if your finger slipped on the dagger and you were aiming for a shoulder instead of a thick vein of the neck.

It didn't matter if a rough shove caused a tumble down rocky stairs and a split skull.

It didn't matter if the love of your life followed you into the woods one day where you explicitly told him never to go.

It did not matter if the only man you'd ever loved came upon you singing your heart out, only for his own to stop beating at the sound.

Only for him to drop to his knees, blood pouring out of his nose, eyes, mouth—the gore a sight which sent your voice careening to such heights that something inside of his head popped with a sickening crunch, not unlike the squeezing of a grape in between your fingers.

And then he was brain matter and blood and organs and flesh and bones and a decomposing human lying before you in a grove bathed in the gruesome story of what you'd done, and then.

And even then...

You didn't get to say you were sorry.

You didn't get to say goodbye.

I was aware of the fact that my heart might've been racing too fast, the sweat on my brow building up as my fingertips tingled and my mind swam.

The blackness of my vision was dotted with golden flecks from the treatment that the Sirens had poured atop my once broken eyes, but here in the dark corners of my mind behind my eyelids, a figure came into view.

A figure that I'd seen once before.

The fresh sweetness of a juicy apple shattered on my tongue just as the scent of rain upon dry soil assaulted my senses.

My mind was only just accepting the ever sugared syrupy sweetness of honeysuckle at the tips of my taste buds when his form came into my perspective inside my mind's eye.

"Calm yourself."

My chest was rising and falling in quick, unabated breaths that caused black spots to blot out the individual before me, who had somehow just spoken to me inside of my mind.

His voice was a spear of ice shot directly to the pit of my stomach, steely and hard and perfectly controlled.

I was so completely out of control.

"Josephine, are you alright?"

Soraya's voice was so far away it was as though I was hearing her from underwater, her syllables and words distorted by the aching cavern of nothingness inside my ears.

But in my mind I could hear perfectly.

The shadow figure from before, the one I'd seen in the prophecy standing before me just as surely as Oren had been, came closer in my mind's eye.

"Who are you?"

I wasn't sure if I'd spoken aloud or inside my own head.  Was this what Soraya had meant about the meditation, about connecting with the land and the spirits that resided inside of it, in order to help me conjure its power and use it as my own?

Was this what she had meant?

The figure before me didn't speak.

He had no face, but his towering height was all the more dizzying as he stepped closer and closer.

He reached a hand out and I felt my hair being pushed from my face, but I had no physical body inside my mind.  He was moving my hair in the real world, outside of my mind, where Soraya was shaking me by the shoulders and yelling at me to open my eyes.

But I did not open my eyes.

The shadow-man shifted, and suddenly eyes of the purest ice blue were staring at me from the blackness which surrounded the rest of him.

I gasped out, not in fear, but in wonder.

He blinked at me.  I blinked at him.

A violent shuddering overtook my body as Soraya slapped me and continued shaking, shaking, shaking, until I felt like I was vibrating all over.

But still I didn't open my eyes.  I couldn't—not as this shadow man was showing me a new piece of himself that I had to keep my eyes on him.

I couldn't look away, not even for a moment.  I knew if I did, then he would be gone forever.

"What is your name?"

He only stared at me, a magnetic force compelling me to step closer, to move nearer to him, but it was impossible.

He was inside of my mind and I was trapped in a body that could not transcend space and time.

Was he a spirit of the land, a sacrifice given in order to hide Hefeta from invisible eyes?

His head cocked to the side in question, as if he'd heard the question inside my mind.

But then of course he could hear the thoughts in my head.  He was the one inhabiting it, currently.

His shadowed hand moved up, and the ghost of a touch could be felt on my throat where I still sat, prone and paralyzed in front of Soraya's body.

My mouth opened, and white milky mist tumbled from my lips.

The burn was acid and the pain dulled from the awareness being stripped from my physical body, but inside the blackness of my mind, the shadow man conjured up a scene as if from my wildest imaginations.

Stars painted onto a canvas of the deepest navy and most royal of purple decorated the night sky above us.

Stretching on a sprawling meadow of wildflowers of every color in the rainbow was a castle with pointed spires and stained glass windows and golden arches and pillars and balconies of which banners in the brightest blue hung from.

White marble coated the castle, and imbued it with a glowing light so magical it was as if the daylight were shining directly upon it even in the deepest of night.

"Where am I?"

The wonder and beauty in my voice shocked even myself.  I'd never been one to admire the landscape and magnificence of the land—at least, not since I'd been on the run from my past.

Not since I'd become a murderer.

Flashes of red blood suddenly covered the verdant rolling hills around us, and I screamed despite myself.

Hundreds of thousands of dead bodies littered the ground, and peering into the face of one, I found my big sister's face staring at me, open mouthed and immortalized in a silent scream that no one would ever hear.

I tried to close my eyes, but I couldn't.  I was trapped inside my own mind.

Looking closer, I found that her stomach was ripped open, tattered to shreds, and the infant inside her nowhere to be found.

Until I spotted Drevan's corpse, his arms clutched around a blue faced newborn that looked as if it had never opened its eyes.

My scream echoed all around, bouncing off the walls inside of my mind as once again the picturesque landscape returned, but with it brought bile up inside of my throat as high pitched screams reached my physical ears.

Someone was being hurt by me, in the real world, and I was staying inside of a fantasy because a shadow-man was compelling me to do so.

He had been standing beside the corpses the entire time, watching me, awaiting my reaction, but he wasn't prepared for me to actually take those deep breaths I needed to calm and ground myself.

He wasn't prepared for me to pull back, slowly at first, and then all at once.

His demeanor grew angry, and just as he reached out a hand coiled in shadows so quickly that I noticed the human skin beneath the roiling smoke surrounding him, I vanished from my mind and opened my eyes to chaos around me.

My smoke had created a circlet of misting fire around myself and Soraya, protecting us inside a type of bubble, similar to the one that had saved me from drowning in the Gold Sea.

I closed my mouth and the smoke evaporated into nothingness, seeping back into the atmosphere as if it were nothing but a cloud.

Behind it, the three Elders stood shoulder to shoulder, an impressed gleam shining in Olesia's eyes while her sisters watched on, wary and concerned.

And then Soraya slapped me again.  On the face.

"That was for burning me with your mouth smoke.  Now, stand up.  It's time for your lessons with Oren."

"What?  I thought you wanted me to perfect my magic first."

Olesia stepped forward, speaking to the crowd that had gathered to watch on in shock and awe.

"Josephine, I believe you've mastered this skill with great ease.  It's now time to test you on your battle worthiness with one of our best fighters."

All thoughts of the shadow-man and more dissipated from my mind as I glanced over to where a Siren with long dark coiled braids was helping Oren to pull on a set of black armor not dissimilar to what he had worn when he had first kidnapped me.

His two twin swords were strapped to his back, and the glint of a bronzed dagger hung low on his belt.

The very same blade that could kill me, if dipped in the blood of one of my kills and then plunged directly into my heart.

Kills that, as of the previous night before, were fresh and just a short trek away from the men's side of Hefeta.

Kills so fresh that all Oren might've had to do was travel up the ways a bit, collect some of the blood that the men had surely bled, and return back in time for no one to notice him.

The Siren's hands lingered on Oren's chest for just a moment too long as his eyes met mine across the short expanse of the meadow.

His lips tipped up in an indulgent smile, but I only glowered at him in return.

"Hand me a weapon then, and let's begin."

"So eager to fight me, Princess?"

My mouth curled up in a smile of its own, this one as lethal as the breath from my lungs.

"Very."

***

Author's Note:

What do you think is going to happen next?

Thoughts about what happened this chapter?

Theories?

Soraya or Yuni?

Sabira or Inala?

Favorite moment so far?

Let me know what you all think!

Until next time my lovely readers,

Kristen :)

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The World of Irena: